None of that is on-brand for Star Wars in any way. Yes, yes, "it's a setting," but it's also a style and a tone. Andor was pushing it a little, but fundamentally it was about finding hope and meaning, and being something better than your darkest temptations want you to be. Or, barring that, about sacrifice. I can handle some...
To the first point, I'd argue that resources spent on a particular franchise are not a zero sum. In fact, it's more likely that the more rich and flexible the themes of a franchise can be, the more resources will be allocated to the franchise (if successful). It can be argued that some of the successful Star Wars spin offs already take a lot of tonal liberties (even if they might do so in different ways as how you might be referring) while contributing to the success (and increasing resource allocation) of the entire franchise. Repeating the same tone over and over might in fact not be necessarily a good thing in the long run.
To the second point, I'd argue that the morals/message of a story is ultimately up to interpretation... one could easily interpret the tale of the ridding hood as a cute cautionary tale against stranger danger with a happy ending... but some might think up about symbolism with menstruation and associate it with darker issues (and there's even some recent new feminist takes on it..) and depending on how you think of it quickly stops being "cute" or the ending stops being really that happy when you think of what was sacrificed...
If you just watch the OT in isolation and start thinking about it you might as well end up realizing the rebels might in fact be the bad guys. The Empire only actually uses their weapons when they need to fight the rebellion and/or punish criminals/traitors, we are not really shown in the OT how the Empire is evil, only told from the point of view of the rebels. Or how are the rebels good. What's the republic's tax policy? how do they deal with corruption/crime? did people actually have better lives under the republic or could it be that life under the Empire the life of the average law-abiding citizen was actually safer, more prosperous and comfortable? If one has only watched the OT movies it might as well be the tale of a lesser evil being replaced by an even bigger one. It wouldn't be the first time someone has come up with a similar interpretation.
Also, I don't see the problem if, for example, the Skywalker saga had a particular tone and theme, and another hypothetical saga could have another. Just the same way as how the life in one country can have a different tone than the life in another one, despite being part of the same planet and overarching history. The OT will still be there and your interpretation for it doesn't have to change regardless of how many sequels and spin offs they make.
That interpretation relies on the assumption that every single man, woman, child, alien, animal, plant, etc on Alderaan is a criminal deserving death and that is… let’s just call it a very generous interpretation.
What I said is that they only used their weapons when they needed to fight rebels, not that the rebels were the only ones affected by the attack.
Was every cleaner, cook, clerk and technician (+ their families) working inside the death star a criminal deserving death when the rebels blew it up? The death star had the population of a big metropolis, so it had to host an entire urban ecosystem, including recreation areas and entertainment.
Sure, the station was also a military base containing a very powerful weapon, but the Empire had very little reason to believe Leia when she told them Alderaan had no weapons or that it wasn't a threat, she might have even lied about Tatooine. Alderaan might as well have been an important Rebel base. In fact, we know it played an important role in establishing the Rebel Alliance.
But all this was an example. I'm not really saying that the destruction of Alderaan was deserved, or that it was an adequate response (although there's people who have actually argued that it was justified), what I'm saying is that things are always open to interpretation, so wanting to keep the same "tone" can mean different things for different people. For some perhaps the main topic is the odyssey of the main character who started from humble beginnings, and fights against seemingly impossible odds. One might be able to keep that same "tone" in either side of the force, or with darker undertones.
The death star was blown up in self defense against a current attack
In every war, I keep hearing both sides talk about self defense, sometimes about fighting to seek "peace", doing "preventive war".. or some other ideal that always moves them to commit murder. One could argue that destroying Rebel bases that could potentially be host of Jedi Masters who train dangerous assassins, or important schematics that could help blow up entire moon-like stations and could end up being the vane of the empire (which is actually what ended up happening) was also self defense...
Mahatma Gandhi would have disagreed with the approach, for example.
Many hosts allow you to set rules to protect branches from getting their commits removed in the remote (in fact, I think that's the default for gitlab main branches) or to prevent people from pushing their commits to them directly.
I expect even "the main branch has to stay more or less in sync with origin/main" can be automated... though it might not be what you always want, depending how you work.
With Meta beginning to test federation, there's a lot of discussion as to whether we should preemptively defederate with Threads. I made a post about the question, and it seems that opinions differ a lot among people on Kbin. There were a lot of arguments for and against regarding ads, privacy, and content quality, but I don't...
I don't think "the development" is what is claimed to be at stake here.
OP is not talking about the software, they're talking about the content. And the content model from Mastodon is not interchangeable with the one from Lemmy, Pixelfed, etc. they serve different purposes and have different models. In fact that's the main interoperatibility barrier between them.
It's like saying that if most people use gmail for email you will switch from email to audio calls to avoid communicating with google's service. As if real time audio were the same thing as sending a message (or as if google was unable to add compatibility with that call service too if they wanted).
One thing you could argue is, instead of switching services, switching to an instance that does defederate if you dont want threads content. But that same argument can be said as well towards those wanting threads federation...
But dont think the point is what does the individual want (if that were the case, just use the option to block threads content for your user, without defederating), the point is what's best for the fediverse. I think people are afraid that something similar to what happened with "google talk" and their embrace of xmpp will repeat.
Personally, I think there's no reason to jump the gun this early... all of this post is based on a lot of weak assumptions. I dont believe that threads content would overwhelm the feeds, and if that were to happen then the software could be tweaked so the contribution of each instance to the feeds can be weighted and made more customizable, for example.
Adobe said it could face significant costs or penalties tied to a Federal Trade Commission probe into its disclosure and subscription cancellation practices.
The problem is that people apparently like the abuse.
Why is so many people simping for Adobe products? And even promoting them in the education levels...
Even if the competition were technologically inferior (which I don't know if it's really true) I'd rather the industry sacrificed throwing away 10+ years of adobe-driven improvements if we could get rid of the shackles.
Oh wow, I didn't know about this one. I guess it's relatively new?
Is it just a convenience command to try and be more specific (less multi purpose) than git checkout for switching branches or does it bring any extra benefit? ...I'm already quite used to my git co alias, to the point that it's almost hardwired to my fingers by now :P
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is ridiculed for dismissing the groundwork of The Force Awakens, but it’s a great sequel that continues the story properly. Here’s why....
If TFA were a shot for shot remake it might have actually not been that bad....
I. The hero is overpowered from the get go. Rey can fly the millennium falcon by herself... and she's able to use the force AND beat a Sith already from the first movie! ...it would have actually been better if they had taken notes from the 1st duel between Luke and Vader...
II. Kilo is shown to be childishly immature, insecure, whiny and prone to make very obvious mistakes... he's obsessed with Vader, but he's nothing like Vader.. he's so emotion-driven that it ends up being a very superficial character that just throws tantrums.
III. Poor attempts at shock value. You could see Han's death from a mile away.... but worse, it had very little real emotional weight. It came off very unconvincing... specially since we are shown how it was Leia the one who was pushing Han to try to save his son, Han didn't actually believe in him to begin with. They really did him dirty with such a cheap death. No comparison with Ben's death on ANH.
IV. Too many superfluous characters... I don't remember ANH having this much filler stuff. We didn't need so many parallel stories being told at the same time slowing down the flow. ANH delivered a lot of world building without having to make long expositions.
V. Open ending without a satisfying conclusion. ANH would have worked well even if it were a single movie instead of a trilogy. The death star blowing up is a very satisfying end. TFA climax is just Rey finding Luke. It's almost as if the whole movie was just setup for whatever comes next without having a good idea of what should come next but leaving a lot of poorly developed characters, with a lot more restrictions and subplots than ANH had, all built up in a Universe that was a lot less interesting than it could have been if we simply started straight from the beginnings of the New Republic that Ep6 had set up..
It's almost as if they were trying to make a remake without really understanding what was that made the original great.
I might have to rewatch TFA to remember more problems with it... but I don't think there was a single difference vs ANH that I liked. Not only was it unoriginal, it was bad at the things that it did different and it set up a very shaky ground for any follow up movie... imho, TLJ did good by destroying some of the weak and uninteresting macguffins and opening it up back again to uncharted territory, and at least when it tries to shock it does shock. Even if it also has many flaws in and on itself. After that, ep9 had a lot of freedom and it would have been able to go in a lot of directions without having to mess up with anything... but no, they managed to somehow still find ways to mess it up.
If your grocery store "willfully acquired or maintained monopoly power by engaging in anticompetitive conduct".. then you'd be actively and purposefully affecting the ability for anyone to "try to build an alternative to compete with [it]".
They aren't asking Google to use a specific price, what they are asking is for them to stop offering special custom-made deals under the table for some of the partners with the intent of preventing competition. Nobody is stopping Google from offering the same fees to everyone indiscriminately... the issue is when they pick and choose with the purpose of minimizing/discouraging competition. Particularly when they are already the biggest one in their market by a wide margin, so they have a higher power/responsibility than a Mom'n'Pop store.
This is further crippled by how the increasingly tight security measures in Android make harder and harder to add functionality that is considered "system-level" and is as deeply integrated as the Play Store.
You can't simply install F-droid and expect the same level of user friendliness and automatic app updates as in the official Play Store. Without esoteric, hackish and warranty-voiding rooting methods, you need to give manual user confirmation for every small update. You need to update 30 apps that accumulated because you forgot to manually update each of them? get prepared for going 30 times thought the same process of pressing buttons and giving confirmation for each of them.
Most of those 90% of vendors are not big enough to pull it off. The ones with the muscle to do it successfully are apparently offered special deals by Google that make it not really worth it for them to spend the effort to try and invest in building their own store. Specially if doing so compromises that deal.
Add to that the technical hurdles of trying to run a store in an OS managed by the competition and with increasingly tight security restrictions for functionality that is considered "system level" (eg. automatic updates on F-droid don't work unless you root/flash the firmware..), to the point that you need to make your own OS/firmware if you want to be a real alternative with the same level of user friendliness.
Then add the technical hurdles of installing/managing an alternative firmware for several phone models, to the point that it might be easier to become (or partner with) a phone manufacturer.
Then add to that how competitive and ruthless the phone manufacturing market is, with very thin margins, and how reluctant people are to trying something that isn't already mainstream and doesn't have the fancy apps from the remaining 10% of successful big companies in the Play Store.
A giant as big as Amazon tried to pull it off at a few of those levels (from running their own installable store on regular Android to making their own devices with their own firmware) and even with all the pull from Amazon it isn't making much of a dent. And in some of the device categories (like the fire phones) they already gave up.
Would it help turning on the setting to have the links always open in a new tab?
It's been a long time since I used ddg, but I believe they have the option in their settings page, most search engines do.
coders revealed to 404 Media that "some of Kirsina’s Instagram posts are word-for-word copies of Sizovs’ LinkedIn posts, sometimes published more than a year later." In addition, "some of the images [Kirsina] posted on Instagram show computer monitors with code that show her logged in under Sizovs’ name." But perhaps most striking is the fact that an administrator told 404 Media that both Sizovs’ and Kirsina’s accounts were banned "multiple times" by the Lobste.rs coding forum for "sockpuppeting"—using a false identity to deceive others—in 2019 and 2020.
It's full of advertisements about the DevTernity conference... as does the instagram, which has so many professional-looking photos that feel like she was an actual model, always with different backgrounds. Is the laptop wirelessly streaming to the ultrawide screen in her Twitter profile picture? because I see no cables, she's not even connected to a charger, how long of a coding session can you have like that?
With the new European regulations Whatapp will soon be forced to offer some compatibility towards 3rd party apps, so there are chances that perhaps bridging in this way will become easier in the near future, or at least have some level of official support. But we won't know for certain how will it work until it happens. All we know is that Whatsapp is currently working on a way for 3rd parties to connect with them.
Personally, I'd hold for a bit to see where does that go and then decide what method to use.
So, while I'm very skeptical that the result will be satisfactory, I'm very curious to see what will Whatsapp come up with when the deadline hits, because, allegedly, they are already working on it.
Will you be notified and asked permission before the page is loaded?
I mean, even for self-signed/invalid certificates, most browsers allow you to optionally access the page anyway... it'll show some error page first, but it'll allow you to load it if you explicitly request to continue in the error page itself, right? and you'll get an eye-catching red icon indicating the website is untrusted... why can't browsers implement something similar to that? Just use a different icon and a different page/dialog to opt-in on first visit. Something that isn't as strong as the error page, but that makes it clear to the user which organization/government is responsible for authorizing the access.
But then again... why not simply have that website registered under .id.eu (for example) and have the EU use that DNS for registering/signing subdomains using eIDAS certificates? then there would be no risk for it to potentially poison other top-level domains if it's compromised. And imho, it would be great if when a citizen gets their eIDAS certificate it comes with a personal domain that they can freely use.
I feel I'm not fully understanding here neither what exactly is being asked nor the purpose for asking it.
Is there some more clear and unbiased information on this? ...the way they wanna call it "secret" is also very confusing to me, that smells of FUD... in which way is it "secret"? are there no public details about the request? "secret legislation" feels almost like an oximoron. I feel that what they want to say is that the controversial sections were introduced very late in the process, following some closed-door meetings, but that's no the same thing as the legislation being "secret"...
It doesn't look like they did it for performance, since they claim the code might actually be slower, at least for now.
Was there a particular reason that made Rust give a gain significant enough to deserve a full rewrite or was it just because the maintainers wanted to restructure things anyway and particularly liked Rust?
EDIT: Ok, found their reasoning after some digging.
It seems to be a combination of both things. They believe that switching will attract contributors and make it more modern... but also they seem to have had some trouble with thread safety in C++ that would have required them to do some restructuring anyway.
I agree with the sentiment. But I didn't want to be too critical about it, because like you said, it's their project and they don't have to give particularly strong reasons for what they choose to spend their time on.
And after all, this approach is probably fitting for a non-POSIX compliant shell like fish. I expect that those who would rather break compatibility in exchange for a "look & feel" that appears more "modern" are likely to also prefer breaking support for some old but stable tooling by switching to a more "modern" language ecosystem, even if doesn't have the battle-tested history and wide compatibility of more traditional languages. Those who care about that kind of stability might be better off using more traditional shells anyway. So maybe doing this would actually make working on fish more attractive for the kind of devs who would be more likely to contribute. We'll see.
Firefox users are reporting an 'artificial' load time on YouTube videos. YouTube says it's part of a plan to make people who use adblockers "experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using."
Ideally, it would be a P2P protocol where the main seeder is either the content creator directly, or a service paid by the content creator (who is funded by their audience and/or sponsors).
I believe there are many podcasts that work somewhat like that (minus the P2P part, they just simply use RSS). Some hosting services have features to insert ads into the audio podcast being hosted.. so the content creators still can choose to do that if they want, but the advantage is that there's isn't a monopoly for a single hosting provider and you can access the podcasts from many different podcast apps without needing to rely on a specific website and company that decides how you can watch it.
What is the extension the video uses for the spoofing?
Currently I have "User-Agent Switcher and Manager" but that one looked interesting. Particularly, if it can keep the string updated to match newer Chrome versions.
It's also ironic that they say it offers a "compatibility" that didn't exist before. Windows 98 with MS DOS under the hood was fully compatible with older games, and it was only with the Windows XP, 2000 & NT line when this compatibility was broken and those same old games no longer worked out of the box. The only way to get some level of compatibility back was to introduce workarounds and special "modes" that they had to add to XP which often didn't really help if your DOS game was old enough.
Imho, getting rid of the underlying "command prompt" might have been a good thing for the more casual gamers, or the ones who were new in the hobby... but most gamers coming from MS DOS at the time were not afraid of COMMAND.COM, many of us only moved from Windows 9x when we were forced to (due to newer software no longer working, or having to change PC). To me, the newer editions always felt more opaque.. giving less control for the sake of security. It was getting harder and harder to try to understand what your OS was doing. With Windows XP you no longer had an AUTOEXEC.BAT or a CONFIG.SYS for power-users to customize.
It's also kinda annoying to have a history full of "merge" commits polluting the commit messages and an entwined mix of parallel branches crossing each other at every merge all over the timeline. Rebasing makes things so much cleaner, keeping the branches separate until a proper merge is needed once the branch is ready.
What niceness level exactly?
The most nice I can be in my system is -20.. but being too nice to one process leaves others with less time and resources in their life.
Lately I started including what happens to my data in case I die unexpectedly in my threat model. As of now I’d like for everything to stay private. All my accounts have a strong password that I store on a keepass datbase that I store only on encrypted devices which themselves are protected only by PIN or Password with no...
Yes, I got your point. Mine was that many of the things we do (specially online) cannot be protected by trying to keep it "secret" in the way you previously described. Because they often involve a "Bob", even if it's one we sometimes don't even notice.
So it makes sense for someone to try and look for ways to at least get some level of protection from Alices in other ways than just "don't tell Bob" even if they might not be flawless (you gave some examples of such ways in that last response).
I don't know... even if a game runs perfectly on Linux desktop (which should deserve a high score on ProtonDB) that doesn't mean it will run well on the Steam Deck (ie. readable at 800p, with Steam Deck controls & limited in processing power).
So I think it's worth it to have a specific categorization for that, specially if it's linked to an official review process by Valve, with a greater direct incentive for game companies to comply to pass verification and get their official stamp. After all, Valve could still have an eye on the ProtonDB score as part of their internal review process if they wanted, before deciding whether or not give official approval.
IMHO, what Valve should do is be more strict when assigning "Verified" status. For example, Jurassic World Evolution 2 does not deserve to be in that category with such unreadable tiny pixelated messy UI at 800p and poor performance (and even in ProtonDB many people are giving it a good score, despite how some people acknowledge these problems). It would be ok to place it in "Playable", but not "Verified". Personally I don't think it's an issue to have unverified games that "work fine", the problem is when "Verified" games don't really work as well as you'd expect.
Maybe just a lukewarm (see what I did there?!) take this time: I don't want to see a hard-R Star Wars horror movie or anything focused on an unrepentant Imperial or Sith.
None of that is on-brand for Star Wars in any way. Yes, yes, "it's a setting," but it's also a style and a tone. Andor was pushing it a little, but fundamentally it was about finding hope and meaning, and being something better than your darkest temptations want you to be. Or, barring that, about sacrifice. I can handle some...
[Julia Evans] Branches have no rules (programming.dev)
A case for preemptively defederating with Threads
With Meta beginning to test federation, there's a lot of discussion as to whether we should preemptively defederate with Threads. I made a post about the question, and it seems that opinions differ a lot among people on Kbin. There were a lot of arguments for and against regarding ads, privacy, and content quality, but I don't...
Adobe Says Significant Costs, Penalties May Arise Out of FTC Investigation (www.marketwatch.com)
Adobe said it could face significant costs or penalties tied to a Federal Trade Commission probe into its disclosure and subscription cancellation practices.
Fossil: A Git alternative with batteries included (fossil-scm.org)
Why The Last Jedi is a Great Sequel to The Force Awakens (loudandclearreviews.com)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is ridiculed for dismissing the groundwork of The Force Awakens, but it’s a great sequel that continues the story properly. Here’s why....
Google loses antitrust case vs Epic Games. Jury rules Google Play store constitutes an illegal monopoly (www.theverge.com)
Two minutes of DuckDuckGo rearranging & dropping results for the same search; Bing, Startpage, & DDG all unreliable vs. Google :( (files.catbox.moe)
Try it with this search:...
Backlash over fake female speakers shuts down developer conference (arstechnica.com)
A question about secure chats (sopuli.xyz)
Two questions....
eIDAS 2.0: Browsers VS European "Secret" Legislation (tube.kockatoo.org)
Update on the fish shell rust port (github.com)
YouTube Says New 5-Second Video Load Delay Is Supposed to Punish Ad Blockers, Not Firefox Users (www.404media.co)
Firefox users are reporting an 'artificial' load time on YouTube videos. YouTube says it's part of a plan to make people who use adblockers "experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using."
YouTube loads drastically slower if it thinks you are using Mozilla Firefox [Video] (9to5google.com)
Google appears to be intentionally slowing down YouTube on Mozilla Firefox, as a new video clearly demonstrates.
The most important games and moments in 30 years of PC gaming, part 1: 1993-2003 (www.pcgamer.com)
Games, software, hardware, and events that changed everything.
Why Git is hard (roadrunnertwice.dreamwidth.org)
Think of the children (hexbear.net)
What's you plan for your digital legacy?
Lately I started including what happens to my data in case I die unexpectedly in my threat model. As of now I’d like for everything to stay private. All my accounts have a strong password that I store on a keepass datbase that I store only on encrypted devices which themselves are protected only by PIN or Password with no...
Steam Deck officially hits over 12,000 games Playable and Verified (www.gamingonlinux.com)